CDSP Automated Voting System

A Capstone Study 1 Proposal

Presented to the
Faculty of the Information Technology Education Department
Colegio De San Pedro
San Pedro City, Laguna

In Partial Fulfillment of the

Requirements for the Degree
Bachelor of Science in Information Technology

Author’s Name
Marco Abrahan
Andrei Jefferson Leyva
Francis Bernard Yabes

November 2020
CDSP Automated Voting System
 CDSP Automated Voting System
Chapter I

INTRODUCTION

Most of the people vote to select the rightful candidate that they believe or trust, hoping
that this candidate will make a difference and help the school into progress. Now more than ever,
technology is changing the voting process, express opinions, and make decisions.

As access to technology and the Internet proliferate throughout the world, online voting
provides new ways for the people to make their voice heard, contribute ideas, and participate in
elections and decision-making, especially during this time of pandemic, some of us cannot go to
school to vote manually.

So, this Automated Online Voting System is a system that facilitates the running of elections
and surveys online. This system has been developed to simplify the process of organizing
elections and make it convenient for voters to cast their vote remotely from their home computers
while taking into consideration security, anonymity and providing auditioning capabilities as well
as for tallying the votes and automatically producing results and polling forecasts.

Description of the Study

The Automated Voting System (VOTING SYSTEM) will be developed by the proponents
for college level. The proposed study “CDSP Automated Voting System” is a computer-based
software that enables voters to vote smoothly, comfortably, and peacefully during student
government elections The VOTING SYSTEM enables users to interactively view profiles of the
candidates and choose their candidates in an electronic screen, through buttons, a mouse-based
GUI or by simply using an input device to make their choices. The system will focus on the
school’s election which will allow voters to vote using a computer and the system will provide
accurate voting results.

1
 CDSP Automated Voting System

Goal and Objectives

Goal

The main goals of the study are to design and develop the not just the best but at least
everyone can vote even just in their homes or everywhere they want instead of going in to school,
wait for the turn to get into the laboratory and to vote so they can save more time, money and effort
by doing it only at home.

Objectives

The general objective of this study is to improve the current voting method which we are
only using LAN based system– last election this proposed system also helps to make the election
better and secured. Maintaining the system can help our information and also our votes are secured
and maintain confidential or with an anonymity. Currently our system is only using a LAN Based
voting system, so the students or voters are required to go to the school to vote during an election.
Now, the specific objective of this study is to develop a computer-based voting system, Automated
Voting System for college level, that is accurate, reliable, and easy to use during the election of
student representatives and to provide relevant and accurate information needed after the election
process.

Specifically, this study aims to:

1. Provide voting software that is fully accessible through Online instead of using LAN-
Based, so the students or voters can vote anywhere using their PCs or smartphones.

2
 CDSP Automated Voting System
2. Provide a direct recording voting system where voters view ballots on a computer
monitor and makes choices using an input device.
3. Provide results of the election that is fast, reliable, and accurate.
4. Provide help guide feature to guide voters on how to use the system.

Conceptual Framework
The figure 1 below shows the process of the proposed system “CDSP Automated Voting
System”. The role of the election admin here is the general maintainer of the system. First, the
election admin can add, modify, or delete voters and candidates through its details. Second, the
system will automatically generate the voter’s id and password and it will send to the voters
through their email. Third, the election admin can monitor the current status of the election through
updating the tally of whose candidate is leading, then it can also print the official results of the
election or post it on the site, so every voter will automatically know who is the winner, and who
is the loser of that election. The role of the voter is that they can cast vote and the can do an
evaluation. All these things are saved into the database, so the database will store these voters’
details including their generated Voter’s ID and password. The database will act as a storage of
these things including the voters’ information, the candidates and the status of the election will be
stored.

3
 CDSP Automated Voting System

Inputs all the necessary details including

Voters’ details, candidates, and the current
election data.

Election Admin

Generates Voter’s ID and

Password to these voters.
Output

Automated Voting System

Voter 1 Casting
Votes

Process

Voter 2
Online Database

(Figure 1 of the Research Paradigm)

4
 CDSP Automated Voting System

Significance of the Study

In this proposed system the study is basically useful for Colegio De San Pedro in a way
that the system will provide convenience to the users/students and also for the officers of the
Supreme Student Council and to the election administrator.

The school “Colegio De San Pedro” - The system helps the CDSP to find a rightful leader
for the College Department in a fair and easy way. The school will receive good feedback from
the students when the process of voting is easy.

Students of the school - It will give convenience to the students in terms of time
management, accuracy and efficiency.

Supreme Student Council (SSC) and its Officers – can easily get a record and also check
the list of students who voted and not yet voted and to easily add and update the candidates from
different party list. This system helps the Officers to lessen their paper works and processes when
it comes to counting of votes.

Researchers - this study will serve as future references and guide to the students who will
conduct a study to help them get an idea for the system that they are going to make in the future.

5
 CDSP Automated Voting System

Scope and Limitation

Scope

The coverage or the scope of the study is that it will provide the Voters ID, password
generated by the system of each student so the student can use their provided Voters ID and password
not just once but as long as they are staying in the school. For logging in, voters ID number is the
username and password are generated and it will be set by the user. A valid Voters ID and password
per person will be used to vote and their voters ID and Password are permanent until they are active
in the campus. It will act as the main security to the voting system. The voters can view the
candidates and vote through laptops, smartphones or PCs either using Wi-Fi or Fixed Broadband
and no matter what Operating System they will use as long as they have working web browsers, the
voters can also view their details and they can request for edit, the voters can also view the status
of the election like unofficial tallies and they will receive a notification that the election has been
finish and they can view the final results.

Limitation

The limitations of the study of “CDSP Automated Voting System”, is that the voter can
only vote ONCE per year, and this requires an Internet Connection to vote.

6
 CDSP Automated Voting System

Definition of Terminologies

Technical Terminology

Database – is an organized collection of data, generally stored and accessed electronically from a

computer system.

Sql - is a domain-specific language used in programming and designed for managing data held in

a relational database management system (RDBMS), or for stream processing in a relational data

stream management system (RDSMS).

Java - is a programming language that is commonly used in the development of client-server web

applications.

Fixed Broadband - High-speed connectivity for public use of at least 256 Kbit/s or more in one

or both directions (downloading and uploading). It includes cable modem Internet connections,

DSL Internet connections of at least 256 Kbit/s or higher, fibre and other fixed broadband

technology connections (such as satellite broadband Internet, Ethernet LANs, fixed-wireless

access, Wireless Local Area Network, WiMAX, etc.). Private Internet connectivity within

educational institutions via mobile phone networks is excluded.

Wi-Fi - a facility allowing computers, smartphones, or other devices to connect to the internet or

communicate with one another wirelessly within a particular area.

Php – Hypertext Preprocessor is a server-side scripting language designed for Web development

and used as a general-purpose programming language.

Operating System - the software that supports a computer's basic functions, such as scheduling

tasks, executing applications, and controlling peripherals.

7
 CDSP Automated Voting System
System – is a regularly interacting or interdependent group of units forming an integrated
whole.

Operational Terminology
Administrator - A person who control of all system, etc. in short, a general maintainer.

Anonymity - The quality or state of being unknown or unacknowledged. The quality or state

of being anonymous.

User - a person who uses or operates something, especially a computer or other machine.

Voter - a person who votes or has the right to vote at an election

Candidate - a person who applies for a job or is nominated for election.

Party-List - a ranked list of candidates nominated by a political party to fill the seats allocated
in proportion to the party's share of the overall vote

Vote - a formal indication of a choice between two or more candidates or courses of action,
expressed typically through a ballot or a show of hands or by voice.

8
 CDSP Automated Voting System

Chapter II
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURES, STUDIES AND SYSTEMS

Related Literatures
This Chapter presents the foreign literatures, local literatures, foreign studies and local

studies that the researchers found as references in the system they are proposing. It includes the

synthesis and relevance of the reviewed literature and studies.

Foreign Literature

According to Abu-Shanab E., Knight M. and Refai H., 2010 E-voting systems include three

actors: voter, registration authorities and tallying authorities. Voters have the right for voting, and

registration authorities register eligible voters before the “election day”. These authorities ensure

that only registered voters can vote and they vote only once on the election’s day and tallying

authorities collect the cast votes and tally the results of the election. The literature presents four

categories of e-voting, depending on the level of security, privacy, and trust that they maintain. In

trusted authority systems the election officials are trusted to maintain the integrity of the election,

voter privacy is somehow maintained and vote tampering is prevented in this system. In

individually verifiable systems conducting the e-voting process is secured, efficient and private

elections are possible, the disadvantage of this type is that the voter is responsible for ensuring that

his vote has been accounted for in the final election tally, these systems are impractical for civic

elections as no independent observer can verify the elections. Voting on the Internet has

disadvantages based on the areas of secrecy and protection against coercion and/or vote selling.

It’s such a truly bad idea that there seems to be no credible academic effort to deploy it at all. The

9
 CDSP Automated Voting System
Kenyan General elections of 2007 brought national attention to problems with current methods of

casting and counting votes in public elections. Most people believe that the current system should

be changed; there is much disagreement on how such changes should be made.

http://mrp.ase.ro/no23/f3.pdf (2010)

According to Godin D. 2015, "Meet the voting machine so easy to attack", an electoral

voting machine (AVS WINVote) in Virginia, USA was found out to be unsecured and hack-able

because its system design has flaws, it is said that even a unskilled person can easily tamper the

vote data, when put in to the test the said machine is proven to be unsecured and is vulnerable to

attacks.

The AVS WIN Vote, made by Advanced Voting Solutions, runs a version of Windows XP

Embedded which lost the support of Microsoft in its security updates, making it vulnerable to

known software exploits that completely hijack the underlying machine. Making matters worse,

the machine uses no firewall and exposes several important Internet ports. It uses the default

password of "admin," "abcde," and "shoup" to lock down its Windows administrator account, Wi-

Fi network, and voting results database respectively. The weak passwords—which are hard-coded

and can't be changed—were only one item on a long list of critical defects uncovered by the review.

The Wi-Fi network the machines use is encrypted with wired equivalent privacy, an algorithm so

weak that it takes as littlas 10 minutes for attackers to break a network's encryption key. The

shortcomings of Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) have been so well-known that it was banished

in 2004 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the world's largest

association of technical professionals.

10
 CDSP Automated Voting System
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/04/meet-the-e-voting-machine-so-easy-to-hack-

it-will-take-your-breath-away/

According to Computer scientists who have done work in, or are interested in, electronic

voting all seem to agree on two things:

1. Internet voting does not meet the requirements for public elections.

2. Currently widely – deployed voting systems need improvement.

Voting on the internet using every day PC’s offers only weak security, but its main

disadvantages are in the areas of anonymity and protection against coercion and / or vote selling.

It’s such a truly bad idea that there seems to be no credible academic effort to deploy it at all. The

presidential elections of (2000) brought national attention to problems with current American

methods of casting and counting votes in public elections. Most people believe that the current

systems should be changed; there is much disagreement on how such changes should be made.

The MIT/Caltech researchers. See a promising future for electronic voting, despite its problems

today (under a few conditions). They advocate using the methods currently in use which result in

the lowest average numbers of uncounted, unmarked, and spoiled ballots, like in precinct optical

scanning. Their report even proposes a framework for a new voting system with a decentralized,

modular design.

http:/lorrie.cranor.org/pubs/voting.html> (2000)

According to Mari A. 2014, the article discuss about the system vulnerabilities that was

found in the e-voting system that could potentially tamper the voting results of the Brazilian

election.

11
 CDSP Automated Voting System
A public test of the equipment conducted by security and encryption specialists from Uni

camp and Universidad de Brasília, suggests that it is possible to easily break the secrecy of the

machine and unscramble the order of votes recorded by the device.

Another issue is that the Brazilian machines, which are based on the Direct Recording

Electronic (DRE) model, do not produce a physical proof that the vote has been recorded. This

means there is a constant danger of large-scale software fraud, as well as other non-technical

tampering that could be perpetrated by former or current electoral justice staff and go totally

undetected.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/fraud-possible-in-brazils-e-voting-system/ (2014)

According to Rehmeyer J. 2014, a group of computer scientist had designed an encrypted

voting system as challenged by a person named Dana Beauvoir during a computer voting security

conference.

Computer scientists had been sounding alarms about the rampant security flaws in voting

machines for years, and the manufacturers had not responded. Dana Beauvoir outlined four

requirements. First, the system had to use inexpensive, off-the-shelf hardware. Second, voters had

to know that their votes were counted accurately and that the election outcome was correct. Third,

voter privacy had to be protected — in particular, vote-selling had to be impossible, allowing no

way for a voter to show anyone else their vote. And finally, it had to be convenient and practical,

requiring few extra steps for voters or election officials.

12
 CDSP Automated Voting System
The group of scientist central tool was cryptography, the same idea that allows to safely

sending credit card number over the Internet via encrypted numbers. It essentially creates an

automatic recount every election, without the expense of lawyers and the immense effort involved

in traditional methods.

http://discovermagazine.com/2014/julyaug/1-lock-the-vote

According to Keating D. 2004, before the law was passed on using of e-voting system in

the government of US there has been many objection and security issues that was discussed and

debated because of the possible vulnerability and security concerns.

They said voters will benefit from the new machines because thousands of ballots will be

saved from mistakes such as the hanging chad, which they said was a far greater problem than the

possibility of a hidden error. They said receipts would lead to jammed printers, confused voters

and the burden of handling tons of paper.

Voters using screens similar to ATMs are guided step-by-step through a ballot. They

cannot pick too many candidates or leave marks that would have to be scrutinized to guess their

intent. Counts will be generated automatically and almost instantaneously. There will be no paper

ballots to transport, store or pore over. Advocates said recounts will be a thing of the past.

One of the biggest raised was the lack of a paper trail. For bank ATMs, customers receive

a monthly statement to make sure the bank has not made errors or hackers have not stolen credit

card numbers. Electronic voting provides no way to know if anyone made a mistake or hacked the

system.

13
 CDSP Automated Voting System
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59554-2004Oct24.html

According to Mercuri R. (n.d) invented the Mercuri Method for electronic voting. A critical

component of this method is very similar to the Caltech/MIT proposal: a voting machine must

produce human – readable hardcopy paper results, which can be verified by the voter before the

vote is cast, and manually recounted later if necessary. Her philosophy and Neumann’s are very

similar; in fact, they’ve written papers together on the subject.

Mercuri and Neumann advocate the use of this technique in electronic voting systems. Dr.

Michael Shamos of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) provides a sharp counterpoint to Neumann

and Mercuri’s views while his six commandments, summary of requirements for a voting system

is very similar to other’s requirements, he’s less afraid of the catastrophic failures and sweeping

fraud made possible by imperfections in electronic voting machines actually occurring in a real

election. Shamos is also much less impressed with paper ballots than are Neumann and Mercuri.

He places a great deal of faith in decentralization to make fraud difficult to commit and easy to

detect. Dr. Shamos even likes Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) machines. (We must take into

account the fact that this paper was written ten years ago, long before the 2000 elections and before

more modern mathematical results like Chaum’s; some of Dr. Shamos’ opinions may have

changed since then. While Dr. Neumann’s talk cited here is of similar age, his pessimism with

regard to machines has had little for change.)

http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~rubin/courses/sp03/group-reports/group8/group8_lit-review

According to Chaum D. (n.d) (Secret – Ballot Receipts and Transparent Integrity) presents

a very interesting scheme, whereby voters could get receipts for their votes. This receipt would

14
 CDSP Automated Voting System
allow them to know if their votes were included in the final tally or not, and to prove that they

voted without revealing any information about how they voted. The security of this scheme

depends on visual cryptography developed by Naor and Shamir, and on voters randomly choosing

one of two pieces of paper.

http://www.vreceipt.com/article.pdf (2010)

Local Literature

According to Inocencio V. Ferrer Memorial School of Fisheries Automated Voting System

(Soledad, Lamis, Valenzuela 2010) their voting system is seemingly simple, and its advantages

scream out at you. If implemented without hitches, it allows for fast, virtually instantaneous

tabulation of votes.

The electronic voting system provided a background on the basics of online/automated

elections, the components needed to make it possible, the methods that would be employed to

guarantee the integrity safety of the votes, a discussion on the general feasibility as grounded to

the advantages and disadvantages of the technology, and everything was then contextualized to fit

the circumstances of the election.

One of the reasons our electronic voting system has been praised so highly is that it’s

designed around the idea that all parties, citizens and election commissions are able to audit the

electoral process at every stage, including before an election has even begun.

15
 CDSP Automated Voting System
Every country has different needs. That’s why every electronic voting solution we design

is different. Having said that, whatever system we design to meet your country’s laws and

requirements, we can guarantee one thing – that it will lead to fast, legitimate results.

http://www.smartmatic.com/voting/electronic-voting/ (2010)

According Florida 2000 presidential elections, the inadequacies of widely-used punch card

voting systems have become well understood by the general population. This has led to

increasingly widespread adoption of “direct recording electronic” (DRE) voting systems. DRE

systems, generally speaking, completely eliminate paper ballots from the voting process. As with

traditional elections, voters go to their home precinct and prove that they are allowed to vote there,

perhaps by presenting an ID card, although some states allow voters to cast votes without any

identification at all. After this, the voter is typically given a PIN or a smartcard or some other token

that allows them to approach a voting terminal, enter the PIN or smartcard, and then vote for their

candidates of choice. When the voter’s selection is complete, DRE systems will typically present

a summary of the voter’s selections, giving them a final chance to make changes. Subsequent to

this, the ballot is “cast” and the voter is free to leave. The most fundamental problem with such a

voting system is that the entire election hinges on the correctness, robustness, and security of the

software within the voting terminal. Should that code have security relevant flaws, they might be

exploitable either by unscrupulous voters or by malevolent insiders. Such insiders include election

officials, the developers of the voting system, and the developers of the embedded operating

system on which the voting system runs. If any party introduces flaws into the voting system

software or takes advantage of pre-existing flaws, then the results of the election cannot be assured

to accurately reflect the votes legally cast by the voters. The only known solution to this problem

16
 CDSP Automated Voting System
is to introduce a “voter-verifiable audit trail.” [DMNW03]. Most commonly, this is achieved by

adding a printer to the voting terminal. When the voter finishes selecting candidates, a ballot is

printed on paper and presented to the voter. If the printed ballot reflects the voter’s intent, the ballot

is saved for future reference. If not, the ballot is mechanically destroyed. Using this “Mercuri

method,” [Mer00] the tally of the paper ballots takes precedence over any electronic tallies. As 2

a result, the correctness of the voting terminal software no longer matters; either a voting terminal

prints correct ballots or it is taken out of service.

“Certified” DRE systems many government entities have adopted paperless DRE systems

without appearing to have critically questioned the security claims made by the systems’ vendors.

Until recently, such systems have been dubiously “certified” for use without any public release of

the analyses behind these certifications, much less any release of the source code that might allow

independent third parties to perform their own analyses. Some vendors have claimed “security

through obscurity” as a defense, despite the security community’s universally held belief in the

inadequacy of obscurity to provide meaningful protection. “Security through obscurity” is a long-

rejected theory that systems can be made more secure by simply hiding the security mechanisms

from public view. While this theory has some validity in situations where the need for security is

not great — hiding a spare key to a liquor cabinet just out of sight of small children — the theory

has been soundly rejected as a means of serious security [Ker83]. This is because it has the twin

faults of not providing serious security from real attackers, who can easily overcome minimal

security measures, and of limiting public and general security oversight of the system, which has

proven to be the best method for creating and maintaining a truly secure system [Sch00]. Indeed,

source code that appears to correspond to a version of Diebold’s voting system appeared recently

17
 CDSP Automated Voting System
on the Internet. This appearance, announced by Bev Harris and discussed in her book, Black Box

Voting [Har03], gives us a unique opportunity to analyze a widely used, paperless DRE system

and evaluate the manufacturer’s security claims. To the best of our knowledge, the code (hereafter

referred to as the “Diebold code”) was discovered by others on a publicly available Diebold ftp

site in January, 2003. It has since been copied to other sites around the world and its release has

been the subject of numerous press reports. To the authors’ knowledge, Diebold has raised no

objection to the broad publication and republication of the code to date. Jones discusses the origins

of this code in extensive detail [Jon03].

https://www.cs.cornell.edu/people/egs/cornellonly/syslunch/fall03/voting.pdf

According to Swierenga, S. J., & Pierce, G. L. 2012, usable voting systems are key to a

successful voting experience for everyone, but are especially important for persons with

disabilities. Voting systems need to be designed so that these voters can effectively interact with a

voting system in a reasonable amount of time and without discomfort. The overall goal of the

research was to develop a suitable, rigorous test protocol for a Voting System Test Laboratory

(VSTL) to conduct usability conformance testing of accessible voting systems with persons who

are blind, have low vision, or have dexterity impairments in order to ensure that they can vote

independently. We first conducted a gap analysis and formal study of existing conformance tests

and methodologies for conducting usability tests for accessibility. We then developed and refined

tests and protocols appropriate to the selected demographic groups, before conducting and

analyzing dry runs of the test protocol using multiple voting systems to get expert timings. The

materials that were developed are intended to be used in pilot testing.

http://usability.msu.edu/research/studys/accessible-voting-systems (2012)

18
 CDSP Automated Voting System

Related Studies

Foreign Studies
According to computer experts from the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) 2000, electronic

voting is introduced for the Bundestag election. The German electronic voting is regulated by §35

of the Bundeswahlgesetz (BWG) and the Bundeswahlgeräteverordnung. The electronic voting

machines used are the ESD1 and ESD2 from the (Dutch) company Nedap/HSG Wahlsysteme

GmbH. For the Bundestag elections of 2005, electronic voting machines were utilized in about 30

constituencies, which consist of almost 2000 (1831) of the 80.000 polling stations and more than

two million voters. However, there are ideas to introduce a new type of electronic voting. The city

of Hamburg had planned to use electronic voting for the state parliament election in 2008.

The Nedap computers can be manipulated and misused. They also take the view that electronic

voting machines were undemocratic as only small elite of computer experts can check them, while

every citizen can control a traditional election. For them the use of electronic voting machines has

no advantage because the safer you make the computers, the more expensive they become. As a

result, the CCC demands the prohibition of electronic voting machines.

http://www.elections.fgov.be/fileadmin/user_upload/Elections2011/fr/presentation/bevoting-

1_gb.pdf (2000)

According to independent group of international experts with experience of analyzing e-

voting systems around the world.( May 2014) The e-voting system places complete trust in the

server that counts the votes at the end of the election process. Votes are decrypted and counted

19
 CDSP Automated Voting System
entirely within the unobservable “black box” of the counting server. This creates an opportunity

for an attacker who compromises this server to modify the results of the vote counting.

The researchers demonstrated that they can infect the counting server with vote-stealing

malware. In this attack, a state-level attacker or a dishonest election official inserts a stealthy form

of infectious code onto a computer used in the pre-election setup process. The infection spreads

via software DVDs used to install the operating systems on all the election servers. This code

ensures that the basic checks used to ensure the integrity of the software would still appear to pass,

despite the software having been modified. The attack’s modifications would replace the results

of the vote decryption process with the attacker’s preferred set of votes, thus silently changing the

results of the election to their preferred outcome.

https://estoniaevoting.org/findings/summary/ (2014)

According to Madise, 2006 e-Voting, in the wider definition recommended by the Council

of Europe, is the use of electronic means in one or several means of election procedures. In this

sense, e-Voting has existed in Estonia for years: the lists of the voters were already processed

electronically, and in 2002 the National electoral Committee started using the Internet to transfer

data However, since the focus of this overview is the actual voting, these developments won’t be

discussed further. The possibilities of implementing e-Voting have been discussed in Estonia since

2001.

The Estonian system uses a security architecture that may have been adequate when the

system was introduced a decade ago, but it is now dangerously out of date. Since the time the

system was designed, state-level cyber-attacks have become a very real threat. Recent attacks

20
 CDSP Automated Voting System
by China against U.S. companies, by the U.S. against Iran, and by the telecoms demonstrate the

proliferation and sophistication of state-level attackers. Estonia itself suffered massive denial-of-

service attacks in 2007 attributed to Russia.

Estonia’s system places extreme trust in election servers and voters’ computers — all easy targets

for a foreign power. The report demonstrates multiple ways that today’s state-level attackers could

exploit the Estonian system to change votes, compromise the secret ballot, disrupt elections, or

cast doubt on the fairness of results.

http://www.elections.fgov.be/fileadmin/user_upload/Elections2011/fr/presentation/bevoting-

1_gb.pdf

Local Studies

Researchers chose the given local studies since it implies the necessity of the government
in school and community to come up with an accurate way of voting system in regards of different
factors to be considered. Electronic voting or E-voting system became handy in universities and
college to cast vote through means of systems programmed to perform electoral procedures in
simple and convenient ways. The call for honest canvassing of vote in easier means helped in the
invention of e-voting in school and in our national election held on May 2010. Since the country
were used to ballot boxes and counting the votes manually, programmers came to an idea and
proposed the e-voting system. Even though it shows circumstances like the illiteracy of people in

21
 CDSP Automated Voting System
operating the system and lack of knowledge about the system itself, we can assured that every vote
from it counts. The operations in the system were programmed to meet the needs of the community
for honestly voting.
According to (Pan pacific University North Philippines) The effectiveness of e-voting
system compared to the manual voting before; the Computer Wizard Society (CWS) advisers will
encode the names of the candidates with a circle before it, which will be shaded by the voters in a
piece of small paper. These papers will be the voting paraphernalia that will be distributed in each
classroom of the CCS students by the CCS faculty members. After the election, all the distributed
paper ballots will be collected by the CCS faculty members and they will tally the number of votes
gained by the candidates through manual counting and after that, the results will be given to the
CWS Adviser who will then announce the newly elected officers. In order to resolve these
situations, the technology of electronic voting (e-voting) comes into existence. By using
information technology, e-voting system can cast and count votes with higher convenience and
efficiency, even make the electoral procedures simple and reduce the mistake rate of ballot
examination. The studies show that there are lots of advantages through the use of e-voting system.
Some of its advantages are; it is faster and convenient to use, e-voting has higher security. It also
lessens human error and produces accurate election results.
However, the study has the following delimitations; the election will be conducted inside
the Panpacific University North Philippines (PUNP) e-laboratory and e-library using the e-voting
system. The proposed system is exclusively for the College of Computer Studies (CCS) students.
Once registered, a voter must cast only one vote using the ID number.
http://www.termpaperwarehouse.com/essay-on/E-Voting-System-Of-Panpacific-
University-North/195002

According to University of the Philippines-Diliman as the Philippines prepares for its first
automated national elections on May (2010), which has implemented automated voting for all its
local student university-wide elections since 2009. While the framework of the U.P. Diliman
voting system (dubbed “Halalan”) requires no paper ballots and is thus radically different from
that which will be utilized in our own national polls, it may be a source of inspiration and future
lessons as our country adjusts to the prospect of an automated electoral future.

22
 CDSP Automated Voting System
The current Study Manager of Halalan, Rystraum Gamonez, a second year Computer
Science student at the U.P. College of Engineering explained that Halalan was developed after
members of his campus organization, the UP Linux Users Group (UnPLUG), were watching a
typically prolonged tabulation of paper ballots for the University Student Council election,
wondering whether an automated voting system for the campus was possible. They scoured the
Internet for available election software for their purposes, only to find none. To their credit, they
decided then to develop one themselves, and the software they developed was used, first in local
College of Engineering elections, then by three other colleges in their own local council elections,
before it was finally adopted by the entire university for the student council elections of 2009. The
efforts of the developers of Halalan have hardly remained anonymous. For developing the Halalan
software, UnPLUG won an award during the 2006 Software Freedom Day, a worldwide
celebration of Free and Open Source Software initiated by Software Freedom International and
co-sponsored then by IBM. The prize — an IBM Power5 server which is currently used as the
central server for Halalan.
Perhaps the most notable feature of the Halalan system is its utilization of open source
software. The code is freely available online (you can download it here), under a GNU General
Public License that generally allows for its use by anyone for commercial or non-commercial
purposes. It is free for use by a large homeowner’s association in Paranaque, a university in Buenos
Aires, or a local government in Tanzania without fear of trampling on any intellectual property
rights or paying any fee to the developers. The code may also be modified for idiosyncratic
purposes, though under the license, any derivative of the original code should be licensed under
similar terms and conditions as the original.
The system of course could not run on software alone. In order that it could run, it would
require a network of computers connected to a web server (such as Apache) and a database server
(such as MySQL). Any computer would do – it need not be a dedicated election machine – so lang
as it could be connected to the network. In the case of UP Diliman, an array of desktops or laptops
(as may be available to the individual colleges) is situated in the voting precincts, each logged on
to an IP address on the university-based DILNET server.
Voting in UP Diliman proceeds in the following manner. The student goes to the precinct,
and presents to the poll clerk her/his student ID (or Form 5). Once the poll clerk is satisfied that

23
 CDSP Automated Voting System
the voter is enrolled and thus eligible to vote, the voter is given a password taken from a list of
pre-prepared computer-generated passwords. The voter heads to the computer, and is confronted
by a browser screen. As required by the browser, the student logs in her/his student number and
the previously supplied password. If the log-in is successful, the student is led to the online ballot,
which features the contested positions, the names of the candidates and their respective parties.
Using a mouse, the voter clicks on the empty boxes beside the names of their candidates of choice,
thereby marking the same. (There is also, in the UP system, a box for “Abstain”) Clicking the box
does not automatically record the vote, as the voter has the choice to review her/his ballot and
changing votes before finally confirming the same. Confirming the ballot and thereby finalizing
the votes requires the voter to go to the end of the ballot and undertaking two steps: (1) typing in
a Captcha code which ensures that the ballot was accomplished through human selection; and (2)
clicking on the “Confirm” button. Once the ballot has been confirmed, the votes are immediately
recorded on the central server.
Assuming that these hurdles could be overcome in the future, is there a need to amend our
laws for automated voting? Republic Act No. 9369, which is the current mandate for the
COMELEC to adopt an automated election system, permits the use of either a “paper-based or a
direct recording electronic election system as it may deem appropriate and practical for the process
of voting, counting of votes and canvassing/consolidation and transmittal of results of electoral
exercises”. (See Sec. 6) “Direct recording electronic election system” is defined as “a type or
automated election system that uses electronic ballots, records, votes by means of a ballot display
provided with mechanical or electro-optical component that can be activated by the voter,
processes data by means of a computer programs, record voting data and ballot images, and
transmits voting results electronically”, a definition that plainly accommodates the Halalan system.
With only a few refinements in the software perhaps, it seems quite feasible for the COMELEC to
adopt the Halalan system for future elections, provided that the benchmark of appropriateness and
practicality (i.e., a stable nationwide computer network) is also met.
https://lawinnovations.wordpress.com/2010/02/18/halalandiliman/

In this article of (COMELEC) this is the one problem of the Computer Science. A
memorandum, the Comelec said it would not be pilot-testing the direct recording electronic (DRE)

24
 CDSP Automated Voting System
voting system, as this would just present an “unnecessary hurdle” in the preparations for the May
2016 presidential polls.“The value of pilot-testing the DRE technology and its potential to further
revolutionize Philippine elections are undeniable. However, present circumstances sway the
undersigned that pilot-testing the use of DRE voting machines in Pateros is an unnecessary hurdle
to the already daunting task of conducting the 2016 polls,” said the memorandum signed by acting
Comelec Chair Christian Robert Lim.
With the May 2016 elections involving the presidency, the Comelec said “pilot-testing any
innovation with the current election system… might not be the most prudent course of action.”
In August 2014, the Comelec Advisory Council (CAC) recommended to the Comelec the use of
the DRE as a secondary technology and to pilot-test it in an area with at least one voting center
covering a minimum of 20,000 voters. Earlier this month, the Comelec said it was suspending the
public bidding for the lease of DRE machines while it was reevaluating its plan to conduct a dry
run of the voting technology. The poll body cited the high cost of the DRE system which would
necessitate the acquisition of a large number of machines as each machine can accommodate only
100 voters.
“The machine-voter ratio necessitates the acquisition of a considerable number of machines
and consequently translates to large cost implications,” it said.
It said the agency’s present budget for the automation of the 2016 polls excludes the procurement
of DRE machines, source code review, and other related costs.
Another reason cited for abandoning the plan to pilot-test the new technology was the
potential problems arising from the voters’ and the Board of Election Inspectors’ unfamiliarity
with the DRE voting system. The Comelec also cited the apparent apprehension expressed by
several members of the Joint Congressional Oversight Committee with the automated election
system.

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/688231/comelec-decides-against-testing-electronic-voting-
system-in-2016

According to the study of Electronic voting is a type of vote which is done through
electronic systems. Electronic voting also known as e-voting has include on its technology optical

25
 CDSP Automated Voting System
scanning vote systems, punched cards and voting kiosks which includes transmission of ballots
and votes via Telephone, Internet or Private computer networks. This voting kiosk includes a self-
contained direct recording electronic voting system also known as DRE.
There are two types of Electronic voting which can be identified as: e-voting which is
supervised physically by independent electoral authorities or governmental representatives like the
machines at polling stations and Remote electronic voting is where the vote is not physically
supervised by government or independent representatives like voting from a personal computer,
mobile phone or television via the internet also known as i-voting.
A Voting machine is the combination of electromechanical, mechanical or electronic
equipment which includes its software, firmware and the required documentation to program
control and support equipment which is used to count and cast votes, defined ballots, to display or
report election result and to produce and maintain audit trail information. This machine is able to
provide the voter immediate feedback such possible problem as over voting or under voting which
will result in a spoiled ballot. This machine has different levels of security, usability, accuracy and
efficiency. The first voting machine made was mechanical. Now the most common machine use
is electronic. Certain machines may be more o less accessible for voters. The Chartists were a
political and social reform movement in the United Kingdom. They were the ones who had made
the first proposal for the usage of vote machines in 1838.
Nowadays Electronic vote has become more popular around the world. Some of the
countries which uses electronic and vote online are: United States, Brazil, Australia, Canada,
Belgium, Germany, Romania, France, Venezuela, Philippines, The European Union, Switzerland,
Italy, Norway, Romania and United Kingdom. Electronic vote is very accessible for individuals
with disabilities. They have the ability to use joysticks, earphones, Sip and puff technology, foot
pedals, etc. These machines have touch screens which can display the information in several
languages and voting choices in audio for visual impaired voters. This feature makes voting easier
and comfortable for people with disabilities.
Vote online is a type of remote voting which can be done using the Internet through a
mobile phone or personal computer. Since 1997 there is a law which allows American astronauts
the ability to vote from the orbit. The vote will be sent directly on a secure email to the Johnson

26
 CDSP Automated Voting System
Space Flight Center and it will be delivered to the astronaut’s Home Counties. A few manufactures
of these electronic machines for voting on the U.S are: Hart Intercivic, ES.
http://www.bravenewballot.org/

Our recent elections have prompted calls for a reform of the voting system. Many ideas
have been put forward and one of the recommendations on the cards is an e-voting system, which
will reduce the chaos that often ensues on election day. One of our Associate Members, Clint
Diesto, from the Philippines, has written an article on the recent introduction of computerized
voting in his country.
On 10 May 2010, after tremendous preparation, the Philippines experienced its first
Philippine Automated Elections, when the country experienced the breakthrough of IT in the
electoral process. It was provided by the Philippine Republic Act 9369, which is known as the
‘Poll Automation Law’. It gave a ‘fresh glimpse of experience’ to the national and local candidates
and most of all the voters, for them to see who automation polls gunned up with more effective
and efficient electoral processes from its casting of voters’ ballots until the canvassing and
proclamation of the winners. Despite its effective outcome of just ‘US presidential elections’,
where presidential candidates easily conceded, vote padding in an electronic version has been a
major allegation by some candidates who lost the election, specifically in the vice presidential
race, where the two front-runners are in the ‘neckline vote margin’ (the runner-up of the said
candidates claimed that ‘null votes’ should be counted, since those are the votes of the electorate
and cannot be disregarded). But the new system of the electoral process here in the Philippines,
the Precinct Count Optical System, known as the ‘PCOS Machine’, that was used during the said
election disregarded null votes as a result of over-voting, under-voting or some marking that was
perhaps unintentionally made by the voters. With the current scenarios like in the manual elections,
where ballot switching and tampering with election returns is very rampant, how can the Philippine
electoral system be in a good scenario wherein a new system has been adopted since then?

27
 CDSP Automated Voting System

Looking forward on the basis of the Philippine Constitution (1987 Philippine Constitution),
Article V states that the right of suffrage shall be exercised by the country’s entire citizenry unless
being disqualified by law and is very clear that such is an eminent right and privilege (more
emphasis on the second, since not all citizens were granted their political rights, due to restriction
on the juridical capacity) that should be observed by the sovereign. Furthermore, the rules of the
Commission on Elections and their promulgation should observe that the will of the people must
be observed and not be denied by technical problems, according to the fundamental doctrine of the
Philippine election laws in terms of their interpretation. Thus, vote buying and rules of appreciation
of ballots are different dealings whereby the former shall be strictly against any person or candidate
who contributes goods or money for the exchange of votes while the latter speaks to the liberality
of the counting of votes regardless of strict regulation that did not initially become votes due to
intentional fraud or stray mistakes.
http://www.legalsecretaryjournal.com/?q=voting_reform_evoting_philippines_uk

28
 CDSP Automated Voting System

System Review

In the figure 2 shows the output of the study is achieving these aims. First, the admin has
the ability to add candidates, their details, their party-list and their desired position. Second, also
the admin can modify and delete the candidate. Then the third is that the admin can register the
students so they will give a generated User ID and Password thereafter.

(Figure 2 of the Admin side of Automated Voting System in Tag-Abaca National High school)

29
 CDSP Automated Voting System

In the figure 3 of the proposed system, it shows the output that how the student or the voter
can vote to the candidate they wanted using the system

(Figure 3 of the Student or Voter side of Automated Voting System in Tag-Abaca National High school)

In the figure 4 of the admin side of the proposed system, it shows the Dashboard or the
main page of the proposed automated voting system using web platform. This views the current
election logs and its status.

(Figure 4 of Precious International School of Davao Automated Voting System)

30
 CDSP Automated Voting System

In the figure 5 of the Admin side of the PUPSMB Voting System, it shows that the system
is modifying the details of the candidate, so it will automatically submitted to the site of the election
page that the voters will rely who should they vote in the election day.

(Figure 5 of PUPSMB Voting System)

31
 CDSP Automated Voting System

Synthesis
According to the many criticism and findings imposed that the e-voting system is not safe
entirely in its security and some transparency problems that are found through many countries
implementing such system for example in Brazil when they found out the security flaws in their
e-voting machine which is based on Direct Recording Electronic (DRE), that do not produce
physical proof the vote has been recorded and in Virginia when the said machine is proven to be
vulnerable to attacks as it uses a weak protocols regarding the security. But in some areas where
simple e-voting systems were developing such as the STAR-Vote: Secure, Transparent, Auditable,
and Reliable Voting System which is low cost but still effectively does it function to the system
security, management, and transparency.

Although of the many issues regarding in e-voting system such as security and reported
attacks that the Irish government still tries to promote the procurement of the e-voting system
because it helps improve the accuracy, efficiency, and user friendliness of the Irish elections.

The purposed of an Automated Election System is to deliver state of the art of technology
that is both efficient, allowing electoral authorities to utilize the benefits of a computerized system
and also practical, maintaining the basic principles that the voters and election personnel are
accustomed to. This solution makes use of the technologies that allow electoral authorities to
complete counting and canvassing processes in a matter of hours. The system automates the
scanning counting, consolidation and transmission of the votes, in a secure and traceable manner,
reducing the chance of human error; tampering or fraud attempts and increases the integrity of the
elections.

32
 CDSP Automated Voting System

Chapter III
METHODOLOGY

System Development Life Cycle

(Figure 6 of the SDLC using Waterfall-model)

33
 CDSP Automated Voting System

For implementing this study, we used the system development life cycle (SDLC). planning,
analysis, design, development, testing, implementation and maintenance to produce a high-quality
web-based voting system that meets or exceeds user wants, reaches completion within times. In
the planning phase, study goals are determined and a high-level plan for the intended study is
established. Planning is the most fundamental and critical organizational phase. The three primary
activities involved in the planning phase are as follows, Identification of the system for
development, Feasibility assessment, and Creation of study plan.

The development phase in the development phase, all the documents from the previous
phase are transformed into the actual system. The two primary activities involved in the
development phase are as follows. Development of IT infrastructure, Development of database
and code. In the design phase, only the blueprint of the IT infrastructure is provided, whereas in
this phase the organization actually purchases and installs the respective software and hardware in
order to support the IT infrastructure. Following this, the creation of the database and actual code
can begin to complete the system on the basis of given specifications. During the testing phase,
developers find out whether their code and programming work according to the user’s satisfaction
needs. The implementation phase is where the automated system/application or other IT solution
is moved from development status to production status. The maintenance phase involves making
changes to hardware, software, and documentation to support its operational effectiveness.

34
 CDSP Automated Voting System

Gathering Information
We produced a web-based system voting application for students and conduct a

consultation meeting to the adviser for the documentation and development of the system and

from all this information, better understanding of the existing system’s problems will be gained

and having a solution.

Analysis
After collecting all the needed requirements from the SSC President on how the current

system works and its problems encountered and now the mostly, we are getting so much time

for planning what the system would be. We will spend time for brainstorming session to get idea

on how to start, to create the proposed system sooner in time.

35
 CDSP Automated Voting System

Use Case Diagram

In this study shows the general overview and interactions of functionalities and the users,

for the CDSP Automated Voting System (USE CASE DIAGRAM).

In the figures 7 and 8 it showcases the old current system and the proposal’s different use

cases representing the process and their roles which represent the intended users and system

dependency of the web-based study.

36
CDSP Automated Voting System

37
 CDSP Automated Voting System
(Figure 7 of old and current Use Case Diagram)

(Figure 8 of the Proposed Use Case Diagram)

38
 CDSP Automated Voting System

Architectural Design
In the figure 9, illustrates the simple architectural design of the proposed system,
including the database model and the modules needed for the study.

(Figure 9 CDSP Automated Voting System’s basic architecture)

39